Gov.-elect John Hickenlooper’s budget director told a group of Republican lawmakers on Thursday that identifying efficiencies alone would not close the state’s anticipated $1.1 billion budget shortfall, The Pueblo Chieftain reports.

Henry Sobanet, who served as Republican Gov. Bill Owens’ budget director and this week was named to the same post by the Democrat Hickenlooper, told the Republican Study Committee the federal stimulus funds that Colorado used to prop up funding of some services and agencies merely delayed some very difficult budgeting choices, and that the day of reckoning has arrived.